


Memories, How Long Can You Stay For?

by Snowfilly1



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Changing Pronouns for Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley is Good With Kids (Good Omens), Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Crowley is angry at God, Death, Easter, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Scene: Crucifixion of Jesus 33 AD (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:54:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23704222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowfilly1/pseuds/Snowfilly1
Summary: " For now, the Antichrist is still an angry, upset child on Crowley's lap, and he's asking questions or demanding answers, because through his rough breathing, Crowley can make out something that sounds like 'why?' over and over again.Crowley can hear the echo of his own voice in it. He knows what comes after that question."Warlock learns about Easter and wants to know why God can't bring other people from the dead. Crowley would prefer never to think about Easter - or shouting at God - ever again, but he's never walked away from a crying child and he's not going to now, even if it breaks his heart.For the Ineffable Husbands fb group prompt 'Easter.'
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley & Warlock Dowling
Comments: 9
Kudos: 79
Collections: Week 9: Easter





	Memories, How Long Can You Stay For?

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of swearing, memories of the Crucifixion and anger at God for letting people die, including a child's thoughts on it.
> 
> This fic involves quite a bit of talking / thinking about death and being angry about it, although no named characters die. If that's a painful idea, this probably isn't the fic to read. Probably best explained by 'author is still working through some stuff.'
> 
> Title comes from Queen's 'All Dead, All Dead.'

Crowley is familiar, intimately so, with death. He knows the concept. He knows the Horseman who wears that name. He knows the practicalities and mechanics of it - has seen it happen, has caused it to happen in self defence and under orders and as a gift. He knows the bitter fragments it leaves behind; the wounds healing with scars that always seem to stay tender, the impossible void between 'world with that person in' and 'world without that person in.'

What he doesn't know is how to explain any of that to a furiously screaming 8 year old Warlock.

He'd been lounging around with Aziraphale, enjoying one of their rare shared days off, when he'd heard Warlock yelling his name.

'You don't need to go,' Aziraphale had pointed out. 'His parents are -'

Crowley had mentally finished that sentence with 'useless sacks of shit,' rather than 'back for the Easter Bank Holiday,' which is probably what Aziraphale meant, and said 'you'd come if I was screaming like that. Something's wrong with him.'

Aziraphale had nodded agreement, said 'come over later if you need to,' and watched as he miracled himself to look enough like Nanny that no-one's going to say anything.

He'd walked at first, and then broke into a jog across the lawn as he heard Warlock's voice quaver into something that was more of a howl, and now he was kneeling down in front of an inconsolable boy and Harriet, listening to a rant that's mostly about how someone's died and' it's not fair _it's not fair it's not fair.'_

'Warlock, what's wrong? Tell me?' he asks.

There's a pulverised Easter egg in the remains of its box next to Warlock. Harriet tries to move it away, but Warlock lashes out at it again. Crowley, snake quick, snatches it away and places it out of hitting range.

'Stupid Easter,' Warlock yells and he goes to hit the egg again, stops in confusion when he realises it's missing. 'Stupid God.'

Don't say that, he wants to scream back. Don't ever make her hate you like that, but that's a demon's response and Warlock needs a human's understanding which he doesn't seem to be getting from Harriet. Gritting his teeth, Crowley reaches an arm out and stays very still. It's a gesture he's learnt from Aziraphale, a pose that makes him seem less like a predator.

Through his tears, Warlock manages a glare that's full of venom. 'It's stupid! I hate it!'

Crowley glances across at Harriet and thinks _go away._ It takes far less effort than he'd expected, and he's suddenly alone with a still furious Warlock, who's now hyperventilating and hiccoughing his way through something that might be words.

'Hate God,' he can pick out, and 'stupid Easter.'

He remembers, so clearly, watching what they'd start to celebrate as Easter. Watching someone who was basically a man take far too long to die, in amongst other men who nobody seemed to care about. Remembers an angel standing alongside her, keeping her company, both of them nodding at Death as he finally, finally came to do his work.

Crowley's never celebrated Easter.

He wants, with an almost physical desperation, to get away from this conversation. Instead, he moves from sitting to kneeling and says 'come here, Warlock.'

He does. Crowley gathers him in his arms, remembering gathering a body in her arms at Golgotha. Sickly, he wonders if the same fate will befall the child in his arms now; if he and Aziraphale will stand another death watch.

But for now, the Antichrist is still an angry, upset child on Crowley's lap, and he's asking questions or demanding answers, because through his rough breathing, Crowley can make out something that sounds like 'why?' over and over again.

Crowley can hear the echo of his own voice in it. He knows what comes after that question.

'Sssh, ssh,' he manages, trying to hold Warlock with human strength and not the fierce demonic grip he wants to use. 'Hush, Spawn.'

 _Don't end up like me,_ is what he thinks as he pulls a glass of water from the ether and gets Warlock to sip at it. _Stop asking questions like that._

Warlock recovers enough to stare at him. Gulps a breath. 'Nanny?'

'Yes.'

'Jesus died and God made him alive again and that's why we have Easter.'

'Yep,' Crowley replies. 'That's right.'

'So why can't he make Charlie's Dad alive again?' There's a rising pitch to his voice again, something that's near to hysteria. 'Cos he was really nice to me when I went an' played there, and he's dead and it's not fair, why does Jesus get to come back and not him? It's not fair, it's not fair...'

Crowley soothes him as best as he can, trying to comfort when the only thing he can think of is 'you're right, it's not fucking fair.' But at least he knows not to look for an answer. Warlock deserves better.

He gives up in the end and uses Aziraphale's trick when he can't keep talking without his own anger breaking through - a suggestion that Warlock would like to go to sleep, right now, and stay asleep for the evening. He's never got the hang of the dream thing. Warlock's a dead weight as he carries him through to his bedroom and settles him.

He washes the tears away the human way, with a cool flannel, and if he pauses and does the same for himself before pulling a blanket over the Antichrist and switching his nightlight on...well.

The wind is cool on his face as he walks back to Aziraphale's rooms, but it feels like a desert breeze. Hot and dry and just short of maddening. His eyes hurt behind his glasses, feel sand irritated.

'Cro...Oh..'

He feels the whisper of a miracle as Aziraphale puts a ward around the room for privacy, and then draws him close.

'Powers?' Aziraphale half whispers against his chest. They don't need to be so close for this conversation, no-one can hear anyway, but Crowley pulls him tighter against him. Feels how alive the angel is, how different to everything they'd been talking about.

'Nah. Just...Pissed at people dying,' and it's so simple and so vast that even his mind shudders away from what Warlock might do about it if he had his powers. Crowley knows he'd tear the universe apart if he lost Aziraphale. Warlock will have powers that make a demon look useless - if he grows up to love...If the one he loves is taken away...

'It's alright, love,' Aziraphale says; echoing words from underneath a wooden cross millennia ago. 'It's alright.'

'He's so angry.'

'I know.'

'He keeps asking questions,' and he manages to cut himself off before adding 'they're good questions. Why does She get to let people die? Why isn't She fair?' Questions from Golgotha and a thousand other death beds that he still wants answers to.

Aziraphale kisses him in response, human reassurance for human fears and pains, and they find a human kind of comfort with each other later, as so often before.

Nanny stands in the garden a couple of days later, watching a slightly happier Warlock and a gang of friends hunt for Easter eggs across the grounds. She's hidden a few of them with demonic miracles, and is proud of the fact he's found some of them anyway. Aziraphale smiles across at her, his expression a shield against loss and death, a promise that he'll never go anywhere.

It gets her through the day anyway. 


End file.
